Skorpio's Motor Discussion Thread

Kadesean

"s the BMW something that every one on here wants to aspire to? Those of you that go ga-ga over these, did you always like them? Was it an acquired taste? Do you love them because you've owned one? What's the deal? Why this bike? Why do so many people seem to want to make this bike into something , well, that it just doesn't seem to be born to do?"


I thought the boxer motor was ugly even after I bought my first airhead, a '79 R100S. Now seeing those two jugs coming toward me as I see another one on the road, or looking down as I ride and seeing the opposing cylinders in front of my shins is pure bliss. For me it was an acquired taste not unlike good coffee or good beer. It wasn't perfect at first, but now I can't imagine life without...


And skorpio if you don't care as much for the Beemers that's cool. Keep posting some of those cool Duc and Honda and etc. pics! You like your stuff and I'll like mine. It's all good!

Marcopolo

...I'm one of those that never liked them, ever since I was a kid I could never imagine myself riding around with the cylinders sticking out that far, good thing we have options, there's something for everyone!

Skorpio

You know, generally speaking most responded to my beemer dig very reasonably and most kind of admitted they had to acquired their taste for the bike that I think looks like the inside out love child of a VW Bus and an air conditioner. People like what they like and should, that's what adds variety to life. My post, which I admit was a bit of a dig intentionally, was trying to egg on those that mindlessly cheer all things airhead, and there are quite a few of those on ADV, and there is also a few who seem to view anything not airhead as the babblings of immature child riders who haven't acquired a taste for their fetish yet.

What I've learned for my egging of the R-club is that many, if not most, may very well have thought, if not posted, the same thing at some point in their lives. I've seen a lot of bikes critiqued on this forum while the, obviously not for everyones taste, boxers seem to have not only been strangely immune to criticism but often particularly ugly examples of this odd Zundapp clone are met with actively vocalized acceptance like a 50 year old with a frat pin at spring break.

There are a few airheads in this particular thread that I find maybe even pleasing to the eye at some angles, and certainly some inspired and impressive fabrication. Doesn't mean I'm caving in, I still don't get bikes that while riding 2 abreast will bump uglies before bars and only have 2 cylinders. My side bar, if nothing else, has pointed out that there are others and even owners that either feel or have felt this way about this design.

I've said it before and I'll say it again, if the designers at BMW had only been making cars all this time and decided to venture into the motorcycle business today, they would never produce a bike that looked like any of their opposed twins.

MFP4073

I am fairly new to this, but I will describe the beemers like an A10 warthog. They are funny looking, at first looks like someone screwed up at the engineering plant, but once you see what they can do and why they look like they do, its function defining form. And when the function works so well, the form is damn sexy.

Skorpio

Well, I think if you hand someone a 4000 rpm Gatling gun, 1200 rounds of heavy armor piercing ammunition, and a seat in an armored bathtub and say: "Can you make a plane that can fly a couple feet above a battle field full of flying debris incorporating these?" You'll probably get something that kind of looks similar to the Warthog.

On the other hand, if you hand someone two 72mm pistons and say: "Can you make me a 600cc motorcycle using these?" I doubt many designers will start with something that looks like this:

Unless maybe you are presenting the pistons in this case to someone who has never seen a motorcycle before.

But I get your point...


..actually no i don't, I umm... Hey Warthogs are cool huh?

Lornce

Go back to the early 1920's and a collection of German aero-motor engineers who're no longer permitted to mfg'r aero-motors and it starts to make a little more sense. Do a bit of research in opposed cylinder engine design over the years and engine balance characteristics.

You may see them differently with a bit of understanding.

Skorpio

The engine the semi-modern airheads are based on are Zundapp engines and were not designed by aero-motor engineers. It has more to do with a German fixation on opposed cylinder air cooled boxer engines, which the Germans at that stage in history viewed as a sort of trademark of German engineering.

Anyway, I do think they are cool in a big heavy vintage bike especially one with a sidecar. The point was no modern designer would ever create that engine for a modern motorcycle.

Kadesean

Modern as in today, maybe not. But the 70's airheads that many of us are so fond of were some of the best all-around bikes of their day. I personally feel the boxer design still has merit, even in the oilheads. I like not having the engine heat right under me. The oilheads keep that heat away from the rider better than anything out there.

Lornce

Not sure which element of the design you're crediting to Zundapp? Plain bearings and eaton-type oil pumps?

But you're right, the opposed twin is a product of it's time. Much the same as HD's 45 degree twin, which would almost certainly never find it's way into production from a clean sheet in the 21st century, is a product of it's.

Advancments in material science and material production technologies has a way of changing accepted engineered norms. Balance is balance, however, and never really goes out of fashion. Though, how it's achieved can change and lead to newer clever designs like 800cc parallel twins that behave in the 21st century like horizontally opposed twins.







Lornce

Quote:
<TABLE border=0 cellSpacing=0 cellPadding=4 width="100%"><TBODY><TR><TD style="BORDER-BOTTOM: 1px inset; BORDER-LEFT: 1px inset; BORDER-TOP: 1px inset; BORDER-RIGHT: 1px inset" class=alt2>Originally Posted by Houseoffubar
Thanks for that Lornce, I did not realize they balanced the F800 In Ducati Supermoto fashion. Not as mechanically beautiful as a naturally balanced engine, iepposed twins, but pretty cool!
</TD></TR></TBODY></TABLE>
Similar in concept to the Super-Mono Ducati, but I believe it takes the idea a step further with some black magic that's all a little beyond me involving the counterweight following a precisely curved path to cancel inertial forces at tdc and bdc.

I agree with you: 180 degree opposed and 90 degree V-twins look more pleasing than magically balanced liquid cooled parallel twins. The F800 Rotax lump, for all it's genius, has no more visual appeal than my KLR's water-jacketed single.



Skorpio
Quote:
<TABLE border=0 cellSpacing=0 cellPadding=4 width="100%"><TBODY><TR><TD style="BORDER-BOTTOM: 1px inset; BORDER-LEFT: 1px inset; BORDER-TOP: 1px inset; BORDER-RIGHT: 1px inset" class=alt2>Originally Posted by Big John Sny
The cars being built there at the time also had air cooled opposed boxer engines.
</TD></TR></TBODY></TABLE>
Built where at what time? I was talking about BMW and now. Last time BMW used a boxer engine in a car was the Issetta 600 and which probably would not have had a boxer engine if the motorcycle engine had not already been designed and on the shelf since it is that very motorcycle engine we're referring to.

...or are you suggesting that modern BMW automobiles would be better had they adopted something like the Beetle engine?

...and FWIW, and before you go there, I'd have the same argument with you about that surviving Beetle example the 911.

Anyway:



Lornce

I'm still waiting to hear how the BMW boxer was based on a Zundapp design.

I love history.

Skorpio

Nazi standardization project.

Zundapp was the supplier of the KS750, shaft drive 750cc side car rig. They needed more of them then Zundapp could supply and wanted multiple sources, enter BMW. They forced parts standardization and you have the R75, the prototype airhead, not the first boxer beemer, but the one the later airheads are based on.

Hack the Zundapp engine a little, add 2 more cylinders and an engineer named Ferdinand Porsche and you have the Auto für Jedermann, the prototype Beetle. Hot rod that and you have the 356, add 2 more cylinders and you have the 911.

Both these designs trace their roots back to Zundapp.

Lornce

Zundapp's flat head, roller bearing 750 became the overhead cam, plain bearing 911 boxer six and every other opposed German engine design in between?

Are you sure Lycoming, Continental, Ferrari, Lamborgini and Subaru didn't see that Zundapp order, too?



Skorpio

Porsche type 12 designed by Ferdinand Porsche and Zundapp in 1931, and um, not a cafe racer, sorry:




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There you go you wingnuts!
Continue your boring discussion and stay out of the Cafe Racer thread................
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Does this mean it's back to pics in the cafe racer thread!

I sure as hell hope so.............this crap is boring!!!!

Ya know as an ex VW factory trained mechanic, and YES I'm talking aircooled days, who did study a little history, I gotta say with all honestly, that Skorpio is full of shit or just grossly misinformed. The Boxer motor Goes WAAay
back and I don't think Zundapp can be credited with it.
Porsche stole just as many ideas as did Max Friz.
Both these guys improved these ideas and put them to better use of course and happened to be in the right place at the right time.
Dog, I yearn for simpler times.

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NOW you post a picture of a cafe racer????????

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Man, Those are some cool pictures, There should be a picture only thread....no, no, no a Cafe racer picture only thread, that would be awesome!

Naw, it will never catch on

Sorry for the sarcasm, I BS in the picture thread as much as anyone...Sorry!

Wow. Every motorcycle on the planet worships at the altar of that beauty.

No doubt!! There's nothing on that bike that doesnt need to be there, and what is there has a very specific purpose

Exactly.

That's the thing that impressed me about bevel Ducatis back in the '70's.

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Wow. Thats pure essence of roadrace motorcycling in red.

oh lordy!

Screw your ugly suitcase motors........IMHO this is the most beautiful side of a motorcycle motor ever made!

Do you mind?!? I'm trying to read here!

I'll get back to that racer above as soon as I can find a side view.

Mike Hailwood's out of retirement '78 Isle of Man TT winning bevel Ducati.

I would have to agree with that. To me, as pure aesthetics go, the Harley Knucklehead comes in a close second.
But NOTHING beats a Vincent engine.

Here's the view I was looking for.






And a nicely presented, if not overly well-sorted, airhead racer.